Intel Optane 905P 380GB M.2 Teased is the Optane You Wanted

Although Intel made headlines at its Computex 2018 keynote with the 28 core 5GHz LGA3647 “high end workstation” CPU, there was something more practical and useful in the keynote. The company announced the upcoming Intel Optane 905P 380GB M.2 SSDs is coming. This is a big deal as it is likely the Optane SSD you have been waiting for if U.2 and PCIe add-in cards are not your go-to option.

Intel Optane 905P 380GB M.2 SSD

We did not get a ton of details in the announcement, but we did hear that the new drive is going to be 380GB in size. Also important is that it will be a PCIe 3.0 x4 device. The Intel Optane m.2 devices to date have only been up to 118GB and PCIe 3.0 x2 as we saw in the Intel Optane 800P 58GB and 118GB M.2 SSD Modules Released. Now we finally have a PCIe 3.0 x4 device.

Intel Optane 905P M.2 Front Heatsink

The size of the 380GB drive makes mirrored M.2 Optane 905P SSDs a viable option. For example, one can run databases on Intel Optane in servers and then run NAND storage for lower-speed and lower priority storage such as image and video hosting. If the endurance stays at 10 DWPD, it will also make an awesome ZIL or SLOG device for the ZFS community.

Intel Optane 905P M.2 380GB M.2 SSD Availability

The official Intel newsroom post says that the new drives are available now. “Beyond processing power, we also see the opportunity for even more PC acceleration with the introduction of the Intel Optane SSD 905P, now available in an M.2 form factor.” (Source: Intel accessed 6/5/2018) Intel separately reached out to us and said: “We’ll also provide more details when the product becomes available later this summer.”

We fully expect that STH readers are going to buy stacks of these M.2 drives if pricing is in-line with 480GB U.2 or PCIe AIC drives. It seems like the availability information Intel has provided is conflicting, but we expect to see the drives released in the coming few months.

Patrick, its not entirely clear if it needs PLP. It may have some basic level PLP ok for consumers but may not have the robust end-to-end PLP required by servers. The ark page for 900P says No for enhanced data loss protection.